Xfce-A more lightweight Desktop Environent than KDE,Gnome
Posted Under: General
Xfce is a desktop environment for Unix and other Unix-like platforms (such as Linux, Solaris or BSD). Xfce is “Designed for productivity. It loads and executes applications fast, while conserving system resources.” (Olivier Fourdan). This philosophy should appeal to anyone looking for a fast, modern, and efficient working environment for a *NIX box.
Xfce Features
Xfce provides a lightweight desktop environment with a desktop manager drawing a wallpaper and allowing you to have icons on your desktop, a panel with numerous plugins, a standard compliant window manager with a compositing manager, a settings manager to customize your desktop environment, a modern and easy to use file manager and a session manager which allows you to save the current session, autostart applications, shutdown, reboot, suspend or hibernate your computer.
Xfce also provides common applications, designed for the best user experience. Among those applications are: a text editor, a sound mixer which supports multiple sound cards, an application finder to launch your applications in an easy way, an image viewer, a modern terminal emulator, an iCal based calendar to manage events and appointments and a CD and DVD burning application.
Many additionnal features are also provided by the Goodies project: a Web browser, plugins for the panel and the file manager, standalone applications such as a dictionnary, a tasks manager, a power manager, a screenshooter, a notification daemon…
Install Xfce in Ubuntu:
Xfce is the default desktop environment for Xubuntu,so just install Xubuntu-desktop by typing this in terminal (Applications/Accessories/Terminal):
sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop
Once this installation finish,logout.Select “Xfce” in Sessions box and login.
Related posts:
- How to restore the default gnome-desktop-panels in Ubuntu
- Install gnome-shell and set default at start-up in ubuntu 10.04
- Install Midori,a lightweight web browser in Ubuntu 9.10/9.04
- GPicView-A very fast Image Viewer for Ubuntu Desktop
- PCMan-Install the fastest File Manager in Ubuntu Linux


Reader Comments
Hi, I have worked with xfce and gnome, the former with the minimal visual effects and I get a very similar RAM consumption. I just thought it should be brought out to mind…
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